What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Monday, November 9, 2009

No, I’m Just Saying You Look Different, That’s All

People say to me, Pearl? What are you afraid of?

And I say, you know? One of my current fears is that as an old woman I will have the same hair style that I did in high school.

It’s a silly fear, and one without a foundation. I’ve run the gamut of “natural” hair colors (as opposed to “unnatural”, i.e., blue or green) and hairy styles that have included streaks, highlights, lowlights, frostings, layers, braids and a brief foray into the much-aligned mullet.

That’s right. I had a mullet.

I was young. I was crazy. I’d wear any hairstyle.

Recently, I’ve paid for my hair to be dyed a dark reddish brown; and, for the first time in several hundred years, I’ve got bangs.

My mother cut our hair when we were children. When she could not find the time the morning of first-grade pictures, five minutes before I left for school, with two other children to feed and see off, I cut my own bangs.

They were what my mother referred to as “experimental”.

These are the first bangs I’ve had since that fateful day

You’d be amazed at how many people can look at you and not notice that you now have a fringe of hair curtaining your forehead. Do it sometime – get bangs, if only to have someone look you straight in the eye and say, “What’s different about you? You get new glasses?”

I had this experience at work the other day.

The guy from the mailroom was staring at me.

This is not entirely unusual. This guy gives the Fish Eye to a number of people. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It used to really bother me, but now it’s like having a cow look at you.

But this time, he actually seems to be both looking at me and seeing me.

“Pat?”

He focuses. “Oh,” he says.

“What’s up?” I say.

“Wudja dooter yer hair?” he says.

What’d I do to my hair? What’d I DO to it? What do you mean, what did I do to it?

“I had it done,” I said. “Different color. Bangs. Slight trim.”

“No, I mean,” he said. “I just noticed it looks different.”

Yeah. I got that you thought it looked different.

“Hey,” he says. “Have you always had those freckles?”

Granted, I think Pat is working with a brain-cell deficit here, possibly from some poor entertainment choices in the 80s, but still, I find this brief exchange unsatisfying. What just went on here? I think we could have skipped the last 30 seconds, don’t you?

And there’s another thing I’m afraid of.

That someday I will be the one to stare at the face of someone I’ve known for six years and say “Have you always had freckles?”

And just as soon as I have a decent picture of me and my new bangs, I'll post it.

Carol, :-) Having worked in the mail room myself, I can tell you it's a safe haven for folks that move at their own speed. It's not ALWAYS the case, of course, and I know some really great people in shipping, but there's always a couple weirdos in there!

No matter how things change, they always seems to stay the same. At least, in the case of my hair it is so. Damn it, I TRY to bust loose, but it always ends up looking like that wavy mop sort of but not really with bangs because I keep pushing them out of my eyes....

omg, can I empathize with this post. Every single time I plop down into my stylist's chair, I sigh, ever-so-dramatically- "I am SO sick of my hair!"

I've tried everything from really short to growing it to my shoulders long, yet nothing satisfies me about it. So, I just go with something similar and familiar and resign myself to never really liking what I see.

Oh Pearl...didn't you see that scary movie...'Attack of the Freckles'?It was awful. Porcelain skinned, fair-haired maidens through out the Land of Olay were horror stricken by the sudden appearance of freckles. It was an idependent film of course...:P(I've always enjoyed my freckles)

"It used to really bother me, but now it’s like having a cow look at you. "Now that's a great line.You know some cows are scary when they stare you down. Also, (I should look up the number because you never know) X number of people are serious injured every year by cows.Oh one more thing - did you every see the video clip "cows with guns"

I met and almost fell for a girl with bangs. A raven-haired beauty from Massachusetts whose bangs stopped just above her eyelids. Very Cleopatra-like. Her father didn't trust bellboys around his daughter, however, and our stolen glances went for naught.